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Images and early posts

So tired, I can’t go anymore. That’s the post I was planning on writing, or would have written this week — that is, if I hadn’t been so tired. Getting into the “new” house, plus dealing with the second round of “licecapades” (as Ashley dubbed the whole plague), brought a whole new wave of exhaustion. Some of it’s the winter effect, and like I wrote last, wanting to hibernate. Just sleep and sleep and sleep. My body craves sleep. I’ve been practically dizzy for it, literally unable to keep my eyes open at night.

In therapy two days ago, I didn’t know what I wanted to talk about early in the session. Jean suggested seeing my thoughts as a passing landscape from a moving train, and that I could simply point out what I saw. This reminds me of one of my earliest posts, Dream Station:

Stopping like this often makes me realize that life has been whizzing by and whirring around me, as if I’ve been on a train speeding through foreign countries where I’m pretty sure the landscape might be gorgeous but haven’t had a chance to get off the train to walk around.

Four years later, boy have I ever stepped off the train.

Two images are sitting on my little writing table here, in the living room I’ll write in until July. One is a Klimt painting from an old datebook–probably one I used in college. The Girl-Friends. The other, also from years of collecting cards and images, is a Native American woman wrapped in a long robe or blanket or prayer shawl, with eagle feathers and a six-pointed star above her head. “Unfold Your Own Myth,” Rumi advised. Indeed.

I feel as if I’m lining up the matryoshka dolls, the selves I’ve been containing, concealing, carrying within me. Going in, and in, and in as I keep coming out, and out and out. It is an unfolding. It comes from my chest and is often so painful the sobs come in great heaving waves before subsiding. A friend emailed me the other day saying something about this must be liberating and heart-breaking at the same time. It’s true; it is both. And it is neither, something greater.

I look around this unfamiliar room where I feel strangely at home and see this Decemberists concert poster on the wall. I am the turtle without a shell. Earlier this week, I told Greg I feel “slimy,” as in exposed. A mussel. A muscle. A heart exposed.

With just a few more minutes of writing time, I have to allow myself to feel satisfied with this small landing pad.

Without my shell, who am I? To turn myself out, to unfold my own myth, to be whole on the outside, to be with myself and with other people at the same time without all the public faces and personas constructed so seamlessly over so many years?

I looked and looked for that Rumi card to include it here but couldn’t find it. This came to me instead. It’s too beautiful not to include here.

And so my intention for the day finds me, just as this image did: to let the images keep appearing, guiding me.

To stay with this opening. To let the light in. To keep unfolding, softly as the gentle snow.

I appreciate so much what you’ve written in all of these posts which i’ve had to read from March until now. Your courage has inspired me and i wish you luck as you continue finding, or owning, your path with such honesty. The sum of all i have read keeps taking me back to this simple quote, a favorite of mine: “And then the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful then the risk it took to open.” ~Anais Nin. Thanks again for sharing your process with such beautiful courage and strength. May you be blessed as you continue your journey.